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My friend photographer Deborah da Silva went on a road trip to Lesotho last week and came home with these shots. This is a mere sprinkling. I can see the freedom fest that she had all on her own, burning it in a little Picanto on top of a high mountain planted with mielies and dotted with chickens and skinny goats. A bit like Thelma, without Louise.

These are part of a wider photographic collection (all by Deborah) soon to be installed in a famous name boutique hotel. I love what the cross processing did to the colours. They remind me of chocolate vermicelli and 100’s of 1000’s. Candyfloss, Fizz Pops and vanilla butter icing.

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I know, I know. My vacation from this page has gone on way too long. They kept asking: ‘But what happened to you, koeks ?’ The short answer, that thing that has a way of coming at one between 6am and 11pm. Scribbling tasks. Projects and things.

But I saw this thing today that made me want to pop off a quick postcard from my dashboard.

When I grow up, I will wear pearls and brown leather lace-ups more often than I do now. In the afternoons, I will read all the Bill Bryson and Wally Lamb and Hello Magazines I haven’t read in ten years, and I will drink tea on the sofa. To do that, I will need something like this. No, please. I will actually need this exact thing. A sofa by the collection of impossibly beautifully designed sofas called Linteloo. Goodness, this sofa is so expansive, so encompassing, so begging of one to flake out on it, one hardly even needs a house anymore. Just the sofa, please.

One day. When I’m really grown up.

A previous associate, who knows her sofas from her chaises, told me she thinks Linteloo makes what could be the most comfortable sofa in the world. And then a little bird told me that Mr Linteloo (who is from the Netherlands) is coming to town tomorrow. So tonight I am going to Weylandts to inspect a few sofas. And, I hope, to catch a glimpse of Mr L himself. There will be Dutch food by a famous name chef and, what’s the bet, all manner of temptation to sip, snap and shop. I’ll be back with a few postcards after the event.

PS. Going onto Linteloo.nl I notice that the name of Italian designer Paola Navone (who designs for Linteloo) is linked to the sofa of my dreams. This is her Paris apartment. No wonder the sofa works. I’m sure you’ve seen this apartment before, but you can always look again. And again.

Paola originally graduated as an architect at the Polytechnic of Turin in 1973, but became famous as a designer with her projects for important international brands. But Navone also proves to be successful as an art director, interior decorator, industrial planner and creator of events.

Paola is Straightforward, a dreamer and eclectic: her mind and soul are a combination of flavours and colours of the south of the world – known, loved and lived – together with the taste and forms of the West, rich in traditions, open and continuously in movement. All of this produces her untiring curiosity in her search for matters and materials, forms and structures. In her search for the present, the past and the future.

Someone who doesn’t want to design systematically, in order to be always just a little bit more curious than the others (in the words of the motivation of the International Design Award won in Osaka in 1983, first of all)

who wants to be a citizen of the world in order to look and discover

who is a little bit of an anthropologist

who doesn’t want to throw away the past but make it relive

who wants to cultivate the East and its spontaneous manual skills (as she has learned to understand after working for years together with craftsmen in the Philippines)

The Readers Digest version of the story goes like this. My old best friend’s brother and sister in law, Gareth and Heidi Chisholm, win a Green Card in the US lottery. So off they go.

Now they’re living in Brooklyn, NYC, and Heidi is carving out her name in lights with Mr Somebody and Mr Nobody. Big names in Afro-Pop culture here, there and everywhere.

Before that, Heidi was a founding partner of Daddy Buy Me A Pony along with Peet Pienaar. (Man behind The President.)

Heidi is the design mind behind the Shine Shine range and those wonderful Obama prints, amongst many other extraordinary gifts both to the world at large, and the world of design. (They tell me Michelle Obama had an apron in one of her prints. How cool is that?)

Heidi’s new work was exhibited at the “Afropolitan” show the V & A in London, helping to making a name for Mr Somebody & Mr Nobody – a design concept that’s a colab between Heidi and Miami-based artist Sharon Lombard.

I love the Afropolitanness of Mr S & Mr N. Below are some more shots of the work, and the official Mr Somebody & Mr Nobody press release in triplicate with a purple ink rubber stamp. Kwaai.

Mr Somebody & Mr Nobody is lugging his clobber to market at the New York International Gift Fair (NYIGF), August 18-22, 2012. This “very important business man” from the Gold City in Southern Africa, is hawking and hipping contemporary African inspired products so everyone can wallow in the African Renaissance—like hippos in mud!

Mr Somebody & Mr Nobody flies and drives and carves and spends to bring to you plucked wood chickens; graphic radio cushions; “heirloom” doilies; and “to die for ” boxes made by Co”n carvers in Ghana. His multiuse khanga cloths emit warnings about quick love and whirling snakes plus advertise a bicycle ride with a piggyback goat. These khangas are a new spin on a clever old African idea with a “less is much more” approach to life, since one top notch cloth serves many purposes. A wet one keeps you cool on a hot day, or it can be worn, sat on and then made into a bag. But that ’s not all, since a khanga can quickly become a tablecloth, a curtain or a towel – it is said there are 101 uses for one!

About Mr Somebody & Mr Nobody

Mr Somebody & Mr Nobody LLC is a creative collaboration between New York based South African designer Heidi Chisholm and Miami based artist Sharon Lombard. Their home design line playfully blurs boundaries between design and contemporary art with African-inspired, tongue-in-cheek goods. There’s something for everyone in products that explore ideas of home, humour and style, making do with less, immigration, globalization and living abroad! Find these global tastemakers in booth #5508 in the New York’s Newest division — look for the Afro-Pop-Up-Shop that stands out in a crowd and catch the glint of Mr Somebody & Mr Nobody’sgold filling when he flashes his smile!

The New York International Gift Fair (NYIGF) is the USA’s premier gift, home and lifestyle marketplace, with 2,800+ exhibiting companies featuring an extraordinary breadth and depth of design-driven home fashion products and complementary gift ware. The summer market takes place from Saturday, August 18 to August 22, at New York City’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and Passenger Ship Terminal Piers 92 and 94. 35,000 attendees from all 50 states and more than 80 countries worldwide, are expected. Information online atwww.nyigf.com.

Golden: one of 300 colours from the Midas Envirolite range of VOC-free paints.

If they dump rubbish outside your studio/showroom, paint the bastards a colour and make them behave like members of the furniture family. These are called Rocking Chairs. Seen outside Co-Op / Dokter & Misses showroom in Joburg.

Love the colours. I started picking out a few colours in case I ever have rocks that need repurposing – ones that need to act like chairs.

About a month from now, it will be almost-Spring down on the bottom half of the planet. Unlike now, when what we mostly are is shivery, we’ll surely start getting hot and thirsty. Cool thought: how they serve lemonade in Consol honey jars, at Arts On Main. Beam me up to Jozi please. I want one.

Cool Thought 2: The Bird & The Bees Honey from California. Killer old school logo, designed by James T. Edmonson.

At my friend Alexis’s house this afternoon, I cast my eyes down towards the window.

“Oh look Lex! Big ants.”

I feel like I’ve tripped and fallen into a Lewis Carroll rabbit hole.

“Yes, Stefan’s,” says Lex.

Cape Town sculptor Stefan Schoeman makes beautiful things out of discarded stuff. His ants are made of wire, old DVD tape and avocado pips. Lex and I are big fans. He also makes incredible sculptures out of plastic flex.

‘What Alice Saw’ is one of 300 colours from the Midas Envirolite Zero VOC range of paints, available from Paint & Place paint shops in South Africa.

When I’m an old lady, I might not wear a purple hat. But I might shout over the fence and ask if they’d let me join their cool as an icecube bowls club. This might be the hippest bowling club in the Southern Hamisphere. Maybe the hippest in the entire world? Do they not know the extent of their coolth, at this club? And where do I sign?

When I’m not playing bowls, you’ll find me in my little glass box suspended in the trees. Close to the birds, and easy to keep clean. A sexy overnighter for grandchildren who will want to visit often, because it keys well with their latest music player / ear phones / tablet / ……. stuff. With them and the house, I’ll be kept young and un-crotchety.

Everyone knows that Masi is famous for its gardens. But do they mention the garden walls?

This patterned wall hit a high note for me. I purr when I see how colours work on such basic plastering.

Masi was once an informal settlement near Kommetjie in the deep south. Now it’s much less informal. The people of Masi are building big walls around their (double storey, often) places and painting them with feeling.

Ok, that’s decided. I’m going to Masi again this Sunday. If that truck moves off the pavement I’ll shoot all 12 metres of this pattern magic. Hopefully the artist will be in residence too.

That’s the number of people who’ve viewed Iz Kamakawiwo’ole’s ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ so far and felt moved (surely?) to an involuntary tappin’ of the feet, or a hummin’ that carried them so fully and completely away, maybe all the way away over the rainbow to the other side of Hawaii, who knows.

I never get tired this song by big Izrael with his little geet. What a voice.